As well known, a refrigerator includes a refrigerator main body having a cooling chamber, a door for opening and closing the cooling chamber and a refrigerating cycle for supplying cool air to the cooling chamber, and serves to store food items therein in a cool state.
The door of the refrigerator includes an outer case, an inner case disposed in the outer case with a filling space for a foaming agent and caps respectively disposed at upper and lower sides of the outer case and the inner case.
However, since the outer case of the door is implemented as a plate-shaped metallic member coated with paint, it may be easily scratched and/or marked. And, as time elapses, an external appearance may be degraded due to accumulation of the scratches and marks.
Thus, a door assembly configured to prevent the marks and/or scratches by disposing a panel implemented as a transparent stiff member such as a glass member on a front surface of the outer case is currently used so as to solve the abovementioned problem.
The door assembly includes a door main body, a panel disposed on the front surface of the door main body, an upper cover and a lower cover respectively coupled to an upper end and a lower end of the door main body so as to support the panel, and a handle disposed on the front surface of the door main body.
However, in the door assembly according to the related art, the handle is configured to be coupled to the outside of the upper cover and the lower cover. Thus, the handle should be disassembled first of all when replacing (or, changing) the upper and lower covers, which may take a lot of time and be complicated. Also, in case of replacing the panel, the panel should be disassembled after the handle and the upper cover or the lower cover are disassembled in sequence, and then they should be assembled in reverse sequence, which may require a lot of time and efforts to replace the panel.